Into Thin Air
by Dymond
Summary: One of the family goes missing. [xover with Without A Trace][MoJo]


**Warnings:** girls kiss, several bad words, there's a crazy guy

**I do not own _RENT._**

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**Into Thin Air**

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**Tuesday, May 8th, 2006, 9:23 p.m.**

Joanne was furious.

"You're never going to settle down! You're always flirting with some girl or the other, and I don't even know why I'm in this relationship in the first place!" She yelled at Maureen from the opposite side of their shared bed.

She had caught her – again – with another woman, and Maureen wasn't even trying to dispute it.

"Well, maybe," Maureen shot back, "if you weren't such and obsessive compulsive, anal retentive bitch, I wouldn't have to flirt! If you would just give me a little more freedom–"

"Fine, Maureen, you want freedom, then have it. I'm leaving. I'm going to my parents' house, but don't bother calling or trying to come see me. This is it!" Joanne marched over to the closet, threw some clothes into a duffel bag, and stormed out the door, making as much noise as possible.

As she was striding angrily through the lobby of her apartment building, the doorman stopped her. "Evening, Ms. Jefferson. Get into another fight with the misses?"

Joanne had to laugh at that. "Yeah, but I don't know how much longer she'll be 'the misses'. And I thought I told you to call me Joanne, Steve."

Steve smiled a little. "Hard habit to break, Ms. Joanne. Would you like me to call a cab?"

"No, but thank you. I think I'll walk a little ways to blow off some steam. My parents don't live far from here. Night, Steve."

"Night, Ms. Joanne."

Joanne walked out into the cool night air and began to stroll down the street.

/fade

**Friday, May 11th, 2006, 1:43 p.m.**

"Mark! Roger! Open up, dammit!" Maureen pounded furiously on the door of the loft, so much so that she hit Roger in the chest when he slid opened.

"Ow, that hurt," Roger whined, holding his hand to his chest, as Maureen shoved passed him. "Why the hell are you here anyways?"

"Aw, Roger, you're such a baby," Mark commented, coming out of their shared bedroom and putting his arms around his boyfriend's waist.

"Have either of you seen Joanne lately?" Maureen looked slightly irritated at their antics.

Roger scratched his head thoughtfully. "Not since we were all at the Life on Sunday. Why?"

Maureen sat down on the couch and burst into tears. The boys' eyes widened as they fervently tried to calm the drama queen down.

"I can't find her anywhere! We got into a fight on Tuesday and she said she was going to her parents'. But I called there and they haven't seen her. No one has! Where is she?" She cried into Mark's shirt as he held his arms around her.

"Maureen calm down. We're going to call the police; everything will be okay, I promise."

**2:37 p.m. – Missing 63 Hours**

Jack Malone walked into the run down apartment with Elena Delgado next to him, slightly out of breath. "They should convince their landlord to install an elevator. I don't ever want to walk up all those stairs ever again."

"Oh come on Jack, it wasn't that much," Elena hit him in the shoulder lightly.

"Yes, it was," he replied, before walking over to where two men were standing, each with an arm around the other's waist. "Hello, I'm Special Agent Malone and this is Special Agent Delgado." He reached out to shake each of their free hands.

"I'm Mark Cohen," the one with glasses said, "and this is Roger Davis. We're friends of Joanne's. Do you know anything yet?"

Elena shook her head slightly. "Nothing yet, I'm sorry. You two were the ones who called it in, correct?" Both men nodded. "What alerted you to the fact that she was missing?"

"Well, Maureen came over about an hour ago, hysterical because she couldn't find Joanne. We knew something was up then. So we called the police," Mark told the agents.

Elena nodded and started to write in her little notebook. Jack asked, "And Maureen is?"

"The crying girl on the couch," Roger nodded towards Maureen. "She's Joanne's girlfriend. They have an apartment on the other side of town."

"I'll go talk to her," the female agent said and walked over to sit next to the silently crying woman on the ratty couch. "Hello, I'm Special Agent Delgado. You're Maureen, correct?"

She nodded. "Maureen Johnson," and raised her hand to shake the agent's.

"We were told that you had a close relationship with Joanne. When did you realize she was missing?"

Maureen sniffled a bit before starting. "We had a fight on Tuesday. She told me she was going to her parents and stormed out. I haven't seen her since. Please find her."

Elena coughed a bit, slightly uncomfortable. "Why did you wait so long to report her missing?"

"She told me not to call, but she's never been gone for more than two days over a fight like the one we had. It wasn't nearly as big as the one that destroyed our Commitment Ceremony. I thought I'd give her time to chill out and stop being mad at me before I tried to talk with her," Maureen hiccupped. "But when I called her parents and they hadn't seen her, I just started going through all of our friends but no one had seen her at all. I came here and of course Mark knew what to do. He's a lot like Joanne like that." She laughed a little bit.

The agent continued to make notes in her notebook. "I'm going to need the names and addresses of her parents and any close friends. Can you think of anyone, anyone at all who might've wanted to hurt your girlfriend?"

The actress shook her head. "No, Joanne was very kind. I don't know anyone who would want to hurt her. Unless, maybe it was one of her clients. She worked as a lawyer in her father's firm."

"Thank you very much for your help. We'll try our hardest to get Joanne back to you," Elena stood up and walked back to Jack, who had just finished talking with Mark and Roger.

"I'll call Sam and Vivian and tell them to go to the women's apartment and have Martin and Danny go talk to her parents. Did I mention I love family's full of lawyers?" He said with some dry sarcasm.

"Come on Jack, let's go back to the office and get this woman's timeline started," she said with a tug on his arm. "Look on the bright side. At least we're only going down the steps now."

**3:18 p.m.**

Danny Taylor and Martin Fitzgerald stood on the doorstep of the Jefferson's as an older woman opened door.

"Hello, Mrs. Jefferson. I'm Special Agent Taylor and this is Special Agent Fitzgerald from the FBI. Is your husband around so we can ask the two of you some questions concerning your daughter?" Danny held up his badge to the woman and she nodded and led them inside to the living room.

"Let me get my husband," she said and left the room. A few moments later she returned with a large man following her.

As soon as they were all seated, Mr. Jefferson leaned forward and asked, "What has happened to my daughter?"

Martin coughed slightly, before answering, "Were you aware that your daughter was reported missing earlier today?"

Mrs. Jefferson gasped and clutched her husband's hand.

"I assure you we are doing everything we can to locate her, but we need your help right now. When was the last time you saw your daughter?"

"Normally I see her at the office, but I haven't been feeling well lately so I haven't gone in since Monday. But I saw her then. I hope she's okay," Mr. Jefferson said quietly.

Mrs. Jefferson looked up at the two agents. "I got a call from her a couple nights ago. She said that she and Maureen were fighting again and asked if she could spend the night. But she never showed up. I figured that the two had made up and she was home. Oh dear, I wished I would have double checked," The older woman broke out into sobs.

Danny and Martin looked at each other. "Thank you for your time. If you think of anything that might help, please call," Martin handed Mr. Jefferson a card and the two left the house.

**3:56 p.m. – Missing 64 Hours**

Elena wrote 'Called Mother' right after 'Fought With Girlfriend' on Joanne's red timeline. "Okay, so we've got a lesbian who fights with her girlfriend and then disappears on the way to her parents' house. Anything else?"

Danny picked up a file off the table. "She works as a lawyer in her father's firm, Williams and Jefferson, but she deals mostly with low profile stuff. She hasn't sat higher than second chair on any of the big cases."

"Apparently she was going to walk to her parents that night," Martin said from his seated position. "Sam and Viv talked to the doorman who said he offered to get her a cab, but she said she wanted to walk instead. Neighbors all heard the fight, but thought nothing of it. Apparently they fight a lot."

Elena looked back over the timeline. "This girl could not have vanished out of thin air. What are we missing?"

Jack walked into the room. "Come with me, you guys need to see this."

Once they had all assembled in the tech room, they crowded around the computer. Jack spoke again, "Vivian called. Apparently this Joanne got some pretty interesting e-mails."

"'Joanne I love you so much. Why are you still with that horrible woman, I see how she treats you. Come with me and I'll love you right. Signed, your true love, Robert.'" Elena read out loud in a monotone.

"She's got at least fifty of them from the past three months," Jack said.

The agents looked at each other.

"Someone's got a stalker," Martin said.

**5:03 p.m. – Missing 65 Hours**

"Have any of you ever seen this man before?" Jack held up an enlarged picture of Robert Archer's driver's license in front of Maureen, Mark, and Roger.

They all looked carefully at the photo for a moment before Mark snapped his fingers. "I recognize him. He's they bartender at the club where you play Roger."

The agent nodded. "Apparently Joanne has been receiving a series of e-mails from him lately. Did any of you notice that he was paying special attention to her or something similar?"

"Yea, the other night, during your show Roger, I was sitting at the bar and he kept trying to talk to me about Joanne and Maureen. He kept asking why Joanne was still with her, when she was obviously such a bitch," Mark said.

Maureen picked up the picture. "So this is the guy who kidnapped Joanne?"

"It looks highly probable. But we will find her, even if this isn't the guy."

The actress nodded as tears started to fall down her cheeks.

**5:29 p.m.**

Samantha Spade stood in front of the door of Robert Archer's house and knocked her fist against it loudly. "Open up, Mr. Archer. It's the FBI." She waited for a few moments before nodding to the other police officers around her to break it in.

She moved through the house behind the other officers with her gun in hand until they had checked to see if the other rooms were clear. Samantha came to a closed door at the end of a hallway and threw it open to see the missing girl tied up and gagged against the wall.

"Joanne?" she asked softly. The girl struggled against her bindings. "It's okay. I'm from the FBI, are you okay?" Samantha holstered her gun and knelt down to remove the gag from Joanne's mouth.

She was crying, but the lawyer managed to gasp out, "He said he was going to get us bus tickets so we could go to Canada. Thank you for finding me, thank you so much." Joanne began to sob again.

"It's okay," the agent said soothingly as she finished untying her. "We'll get you to the hospital and if they okay you, you can go home to your girlfriend."

Joanne smiled slightly through her tears as Samantha helped her stand and walk.

**5:51 p.m.**

Maureen ran through the hospital, Mark and Roger barely able to keep up with her. She burst through the door of Joanne's room and nearly crushed her girlfriend in a tight hug. The nurse was frowning.

"My god, I thought I'd lost you," Maureen whispered, raining kisses on Joanne's face. "Never scare me like that again. Because I'm never going to make you want to leave for good again. Living just these few days without you was like hell, baby. I love you."

Joanne smiled and brought Maureen's lips to hers for a real kiss. The two were interrupted by a subtle cough that came from the door of the room. Agent Delgado was looking at the two women.

"I thought you'd like to know that the FBI just picked up Robert Archer as he was attempting to buy two bus tickets to Canada." She smiled at Joanne, who was crying again. "I'm afraid I still need to talk to you, standard procedure. But as soon as we're done you can go home."

Joanne nodded and wrapped her arms around Maureen's waist, happy to be safe again.

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**Words: **2240

This was written for speedrent challenge #88. The challenge was to write a crossover with a TV show that was not Law and Order.

As I was thinking about the shows I watch, I realized that I only ever watch crime dramas.

If you read, please review.

Dymond


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